Maternal Health and American Cultural Values: Beyond the Social Determinants

This book uniquely explores American cultural values as a factor in maternal health. It looks beyond the social determinants of health as primarily contributing to the escalating maternal morbidity and mortality in the United States.   

The United States is an outlier with poor maternal health outcomes and high morbidity/mortality in comparison to other high-resource and many mid-level resource nations. While the social determinants of health identify social and environmental conditions affecting maternal health, they do not answer the broader underlying question of why many American women, in a high-resource environment, experience poor maternal health outcomes. Frequent near-misses, high levels of severe childbearing-related morbidity, and high maternal mortality are comparable to those of lower-resource nations. 

This book includes contributions from recognized medical and cultural anthropologists, and diverse clinical and public health professionals. The authors examine American patterns of decision-making from the perspectives of intersecting social, cultural, and medical values influencing maternal health outcomes. Using an interdisciplinary critical analysis approach, the work draws upon decision-making theory and life course theory. Topics explored include:

• Cultural values as a basis for decision-making
• Social regard for motherhood
• Immigrants, refugees and undocumented mothers
• Cultural conflicts and maternal autonomy
• Health outcomes among justice-involved mothers

Maternal Health and American Cultural Values: Beyond the Social Determinants is an essential resource for clinical and public health practitioners and their students, providing a framework for graduate-level courses in public health, the health sciences, women’s studies, and the social sciences. The book also targets anthropologists, sociologists, and women studies scholars seeking to explain the links between American cultural decision-making and health outcomes. Policy-makers, ethicists, journalists, and advocates for reproductive health justice also would find the text a useful resource.

Barbara A. Anderson, DrPH, CNM, FACNM, FAAN, is professor emerita and a founding director of the Doctor of Nursing Practice at Frontier Nursing University, Lexington, Kentucky. She formerly served as administrative dean at Seattle University College of Nursing, Seattle, Washington, and faculty at Loma Linda University School of Public Health, Loma Linda, California. Promoting and enabling the health of mothers is her lifelong passion and she has deep experience in the USA and globally in public health, nurse-midwifery, and university administration and education. She was lead editor of The maternal health crisis in America: Nursing implications for advocacy and practice (2019)―an American Journal of Nursing (AJN) first-place award winner and lead editor of Best practices in midwifery: Using the evidence to implement change (2013, 2017), also first-place AJN award winner. She co-edited four editions of Caring for the vulnerable: Perspectives in nursing theory,research, and practice (2008, 2012, 2016, 2019) and co-authored a four-volume series on genocide, Warning signs of genocide (2013-2023), based upon genocidal experiences with refugees. She currently serves on the editorial board of the International Journal of Childbirth; the community advisory board of an NIH-funded childhood obesity study among low-income Hispanic mothers, University of California at Riverside, School of Medicine; and on the national team for the Accreditation Commission for Midwifery Education. She received the National League of Nursing Mary Adelaide Nutting Award for Outstanding Teaching (2019) and the American Association of Birth Centers Media Award (2018). She has been on teams at Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health examining refugee health and cultural competency in maternal health care. 

Lisa R. Roberts, Dr.PH, FNP-BC, FAANP, FAAN, is professor and research director, School of Nursing, with secondary appointment in the School of Behavioral Health and a faculty scholar in the Institute for Health Policy and Leadership and the Center for Bioethics, Loma Linda University, Loma Linda, California. She maintains a full teaching load with graduate students and grant-procurement as research director. She has broad domestic and global experience in maternal health, perinatal grief, and vulnerable populations. Her research has focused on maternal vulnerability and perinatal grief. Also currently in clinical practice as a Nurse Practitioner, she has worked with multiple cultural groups in rural and urban settings in the USA and globally. She served as a consultant for Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health in the development of Cultural competency in maternal health care educational modules for healthcare professionals, and as a panel member for a seminar titled, Why are Black mothers and babies in a life-or-death crisis? A lesson on the disparities in maternal and infant mortality. In 2022 she completed a Fulbright Faculty award as a visiting scholar at Christian Medical College - Vellore, India. She is coeditor of The maternal health crisis in America: Nursing implications for advocacy and practice (2019), coeditor of Midwifery for nurses in India (2018), and an author on role transition among immigrant women in Caring for the Vulnerable: Perspectives in Nursing Theory, Practice, and Research, 4^th Ed. (2015).